


The Book of Adam

by queenmab24601



Series: Book of Adam [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Female Michael, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Post-Cage, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-09 06:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1971603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmab24601/pseuds/queenmab24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam's out of the cage. With the former lead of archangel half in and half out of his life. Rearranging it in whatever way she sees fit. It doesn't sit well with him.<br/>Kristen's ex boyfriend has seemingly come back to life and is wandering around New York City.<br/>And Michael is either slowly turning human or something else. Either way she's keeping something from Adam.</p>
<p>(NOTE AS OF MARCH 2016: this work is now back in progress, but somewhat under construction. I wasn't happy with the old version and my outline for it, so I'm shuffling some things around. Timeline is also going to be adjusted accordingly.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Book of Adam

**Author's Note:**

> Michael has a female vessel right now, and prefers the pronouns her vessels like. Outside of a human body, like all angels, Michael is Nonbinary and uses they/them/their. I'll delve more into this and how personhood and gender, etc. develops along with a discovery of what it means to be human.

Manhattan is hot in the summer. There’s no real wind because of the skyscrapers, and ten times the humidity there should be because of the Hudson.

“Hot as hell, am I right?” Julie asks. She’s fanning herself with her bio workbook.

“Eh. I don’t have much basis for comparison,” Kristen says. She slips on her sunglasses. For a while the sun was blessedly behind the clouds, but now it’s out in full force.

They’re out on the porch. The air conditioning finally sputtered to a stop two hours ago, after wheezing through most of April and May.

Kristen called the repair guy the second it stopped, but he’s busy. Might not get to it until next week.

Everyone’s been calling, you see.  
Sure. Everyone in university sanctioned housing, maybe. There for a summer internship like Kristen, or cramming in summer classes like Julie.

Their apartment is, well, plainly put, craptastic. But it’s better than Windom.

Windom has gotten creepy as fuck. Kristen goes back for some breaks, because her parents say so. And she went back for a while freshman year when she had to leave for the whole bizarre funeral thing. Okay, as a funeral it wasn’t really that strange. The funeral director was chewing gum, which was annoying. And the closed caskets made her feel itchy. They just screamed MURDER MURDER MURDER.

It was like being in Law and Order. Kristen guesses, at least. She’s never seen Law and Order. But sometimes Julie marathons old episodes at night when she can’t sleep and the “DUN–DUN” of the opening credits seep into her dreams.

Anyway, the weird thing was being at Adam’s funeral in particular. They’d gone to school together. She grew up two blocks away. He was her best friend since first grade, for Christ’s sake. She’d gone to prom with him. They’d dated in that way only seen in small towns. Where you’re kind of supposed to and everyone expects it and you like each other, really, but it felt more like a push than a real choice. And they’d broken up before college because that was expected too.  
But all she could think about was going to their house. And Ms. Milligan fixing her sandwiches with the crust cut off. And Adam’s atrocious haircut in the fourth grade. And the songs from prom playing over and over again in her head.

They don't  go away. The songs, that is. The minute her parents pick her up from the closest airport and drive her past the Windom sign, cheesy 80s pop grinds its slow way across her brain. God save Kristen from Take My Breath Away

So, no more Minnesota for her. Kristen’s done. She likes Manhattan. Likes the whole East Coast, really. Loves Columbia – could gush about it for hours, really. Loves her summer internship at the vet’s down the street.

It’s normal. Nice, even, besides the sewer smell that sometimes rises up when she gets too near the river. No psycho serial killers in New York (Okay, well, yes there has to be with a population that size in Manhattan alone, but they’ve never murdered anyone she knows).  
And okay, at least Windom had a breeze.

“I might be melting,” She tells Julie

“Maybe. That casserole attempt on Tuesday did more closely resemble a witch’s brew than something edible for humans.”

“Ugh. I’m too hot to even flip you off.”

Julie laughs. “I’m not.” She raises both hands, middle fingers extended, in Kristen’s general direction.

“Gee, thanks.” Even the lawn chairs are hot now. “I’ve got to get out of this apartment.”

“So head down to Starbucks or something,” Julie puts her hands back down and leans back. “And bring me back lemonade.”

“Yeah, and I’ll use the free Wi-Fi to put up anonymous comments on the repair man’s website. That’ll be a good waste of an hour.

Julie gives Kristen a thumbs up. “Annoy well, my friend.”

Kristen avoids the elevator – why trap yourself in an oven when you’ve been living in a toaster? - And sinks down the stairs at the fastest pace she can manage. Ugh. Multiple levels. A terrible idea on all fronts.

At least she’s not the only one who looks like they’re wilting. Every third or fourth man she passes on the block has his shirt off. But not the attractive ones, of course.

She’s just made it into the local coffee shop literally across the street from the apartment (the coffee is worse than Starbucks and the Wi-Fi password is always in bad French because the owner is particularly pretentious and majored in it) when Kristen sees…well…something. She could be dreaming, but there’s no reassuring crime show theme to anchor her.

Horrifyingly, the start of Total Eclipse of the Heart echoes its way across the speakers placed above the door to the café.

And Adam Milligan, alive and looking bored, is ordering a drink at the counter.

 

“God it’s hot,” The douchey looking guy at the counter says to Adam. “Almost makes you wish you could move to hell. It's probably colder there.” The guy cracks a smile, but Adam's not having it

“Not really, no.” Adam knows better than to be rude. It may have been a long time since he was last alive, but he's certain customer service jobs still suck. They've probably gotten even worse since then. But had to wait twenty minutes for this guy to come out of the back room. All he wanted was a hot coffee. Preferably slightly burnt. Adam was a big coffee fan before he died. What with his mom working odd hours and being in charge of his own bed time and an early morning alarm clock, Adam learned the magical benefits of caffeine addiction early on. Plus he'd been a college student the first time he kicked the bucket, right in the prime of coffee loving life, if stereotypes were true. (And Adam had seen enough to know they were).

Now, coffee is never hot enough. Adam's not stupid enough to drink boiling coffee- he _was_ a med student. But there's nothing that compares to being lit up from the inside like when he was Michael's vessel. That's the only feeling Adam wants to chase now, not the dregs of adrenaline boosted awareness. 

It's disgusting. 

How much Adam craves vesselhood. It makes him a little sick thinking about it. Now, he wasn't too crazy about being out of control in his own body. But here was really something to being tied through your soul to someone else when you're locked in a small space with the Devil. It's only natural that he misses Michael. Stockholm Syndrome at its finest.

Speaking of heaven's greatest asshole, she's been gone for three weeks now. And hadn't that been a shock. Waking up on a couch in a room that felt too cold to and seeing a strange woman. Adam had gone after Michael with a knife first, thinking she was one of Lucifer's hallucinations. But the first place Michael had holed him up had two mythic gods in it, and they'd held him back. Adam wouldn't have even been able to nick Michael anyway. But still, no assassination attempts for him.

(And privately, Adam knows he wouldn't have gone very far with the ruthless stabbing anyway. As soon as he'd looked the woman in the eyes, he'd known she was Michael. And he couldn't hurt her, despite his anger. Something inside him thought of the archangel far too fondly for that. Probably those repressed cage memories. Plus, Adam still physically bore the remnants of the cage. He couldn't have done much damage with broken ribs and a sprained wrist. )

Michael didn't keep Adam in that first apartment long, though. She'd moved them elsewhere in the city as soon as all of Adam's wounds were healed. Trying to get them away from less friendly gods, she'd said. And then promptly left. No explanation as to why. Just there one moment and gone the next, after only a slight narrowing to her eyes. Adam is going to have a lot of abandonment issues by the time this is all over.

So yeah, Adam’s a little pissed.

Adam grabs the coffee when it arrives and hands over five dollars to the cashier. "Keep the change." Somehow Michael had gotten him a fake ID and credit card, with an absolutely loaded bank account. Angelic influence or whatever, Adam's not quibbling over the extra dough. He'd like to know where it comes from, but, again, Michael hadn't stayed long enough to explain.

Walking out of the coffee shop, Adam vaguely feels like someone's intern, hurtling through Manhattan with all the other twenty-somethings (his age is another issue Adam's having trouble figuring out). The rub up against "reality" makes it too awkward to pretend for long. It's almost easier _not_ to think.

 

Kristen is not stalking the ghost of her ex-boyfriend. She's researching an astonishing development in neuroscience. Or something. She's bullshitted enough late night lab reports to fool her own mind.

Adam didn't even so much look at her when he walked out the door. Just moved straight ahead, a sort of glaze hung over his eyes. He looks tired. But maybe being brought back from the dead does that to a guy. Kristen mentally shakes herself. What she _should_ be doing is writing down these hallucinatory symptoms and seeking help. For her own comfort, as she chases after Adam, she solves long division problems out in her head. Carry the two, add the zombie ex-boyfriend - forget it. She should really pick one supernatural label for undead Adam and stick to it.

Kristen is sweating buckets, but, from what she can tell, up ahead Adam is decidedly not. He's even got a hoodie on that he zips up once they've moved about a block down. It's weird (okay, everything right now is weird but this is an added messed up level to the metaphorical parfait that is her life).

After a few blocks, Adam turns the corner and walks into what looks to be a very expensive apartment building. There's a doorman and everything. And Adam, who had always been the one to hold onto Midwestern politeness the most, doesn't even acknowledge the guy. He just heads in, coffee in hand, and disappears.

Kristen isn't exactly sure _what_ her plan is concerning Adam. It might not even be Adam. Just Kristen seeing faces where she shouldn't. But she has to know the truth. Kristen clenches her hands, and takes a deep breath, before heading toward the doorman herself.

He stops her just before she walks in. 

"Can I help you miss?'

Kristen's always been good on her feet. "Yes. My friend just walked in - he forgot the keys to the student lab we work in." She fishes out her own and shows them to the doorman. "He's always the first one there, and I didn't want him to forget." 

The doorman looks wary.

Kristen tries for something more jokey - mocking. More casual college student. She is one, after all. "No way I'm waking up that early to get there," she says. 

And this doorman must not be the early morning doorman because, finally, he shrugs and lets Kristen in. 

The elevator inside is a lot cleaner than the creaking one she avoided this morning in student housing. Shiny gold green walls - so clear Kristen can fully see her reflection in them. Mirror Kristen looks panicked, stricken. That must have helped her case with the key excuse. Really, Kristen still cannot get over it. Seeing Adam again. If it really is him. Doubts aside, she did sneak into a building to check. She can go a bit farther to confirm.

When the elevator opens, Kristen is conveniently and unfortunately in front of a very nice open apartment, facing her ex-boyfriend. Adam's apartment keys are in hand, all labeled with masking tape. It can't have been too long since he moved in. That's probably why it's taking him so long to get in. There's a long awkward moment where Kristen and Adam stare at one another, the sounds of the jingling keys in their hands the only break in the silence.

"Kristen?" Adam asks. Or says, really. He appears only mildly shocked, as though Kristen is one of a thousand surprises he receives a given day.

"Adam. You look well." Kristen says, struggling to come up with the words. She winces afterwards. "You look well?". Hardly the appropriate thing to say to the recently dead. Or, supposedly recently dead.

That's when someone flashes into existence between them all. As in, appears out of nowhere..

Kristen must have passed out back in the apartment. When she was heading to the coffee shop, maybe. The heat had gotten to her on her way down the stairs and everything since then has been a fever dream. She hopes _someone_ is taking her to the ER. There's no way Julie was going to move from her lawn chair for at least a couple more hours.

"Adam." Says the newcomer. She's tall, dark haired, with lightly tanned skin. Beautiful, but not pretty. Like a bonfire hemmed in by skin. And she has a killer leather jacket.

Really, it's over ninety degrees, do none of these people feel heat?

Then Ms.fabulous leather jacket leans over and kisses Adam. On the lips.

This is, quite possibly, the weirdest day of Kristen McGee's life. 


End file.
